The Trump Administration says players "should do free speech on their own time." Pence should do his free speech on his own dime. Even, though Pence and Mother Pence were shocked, shocked, I tell you, that kneeling was going on.

U.S. taxpayers didn't have to shell out a couple hundred thousand dollars in additional travel and security costs for the NFL's San Francisco 49ers to take a knee during the National Anthem -- did they?

Now, I don't begrudge Pence for flying to Southern California yesterday for a political reception and fundraiser for embattled GOP Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Orange County). When you're at that level, politically-related travel is all part of the show.

But I do very much resent him for making a quick pit stop at a Colts game in his former hometown of Indianapolis, just so he could play the role of the Star-Spangled Diva in a premeditated act of pseudo-patriotic resentment over something that everybody knew would happen.

Some people were calling it a cheap stunt, but I disagree. While it was clearly a stunt, it certainly wasn't cheap. Mike Pence did that on our dime.

"Sunday's NFL game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Indianapolis Colts was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Eastern time. By 1:24 p.m., Vice President Pence's official Twitter account had posted this. [LINK.]

"That graphic -- complete with the appropriate social media information -- was the tail end of a thread of tweets that conveyed the same message. The thread began at 1:08 p.m., without a typo to be found. This reinforces the obvious conclusion that Pence's appearance at the game and his well-coordinated exit from it was staged.

[...]

"Pence's flight to Indianapolis was planned for weeks; his social-media response ready to go with a graphic immediately after he left the stadium. It's an impressive level of preparation for an administration, as it turns out, focused on goading the president's base into anger at black athletes.

"The trip wasn't free, and the idea that it was a cost savings is ridiculous. But the really galling aspect of Pence's jaunt was that it demonstrated the sort of issue on which the administration is deliberate about having its act together."

call Jerry Jones's bluff; be kind of amusing if Jones realized that if he benched all the kneelers, he wouldn't have enough players to field a team.

On a kinda-sorta related note, Amazon is currently auditioning cities to be the site of its 2nd headquarters, and from what I know from my Seattle friends, this gazillion-dy wealthy company will choose the city that makes it the best deal - which will mean huge tax subsidies that some city/state's leaders will try to justify because of all the jobs and income such a venture would create.

It's obscene, really, when you think of all the money the NFL has, that it should be getting any breaks at all.

But it's not like Trump is concerned about it as part of a broader tax policy - he's ticked off because he hasn't been able to force the NFL to knuckle under to Trump's own perverted sense of patriotism.

I guess he doesn't think he has anything better to do than play golf, watch TV and tweet; golly, who knew the presidency was barely a part-time job? Guess it's a good thing the benefits are so good, huh?

Many of the fans whose tax money built those stadia may have felt the kneeling jesture was a big F. U.

Most of those fans felt they would be fired if they if they decided to make a political protest on their employer's time. That the NFL lets the super rich players get away with behavior insulting to paying customers, their anger is directed more to management than the players.

That is a favorite conservative defense. That is why we are hearing so much about Harvey Weinstein--as if that absolves Trump somehow.

Your know the answer to such a defense? Your probably heard the old axiom two wrongs don't make a right? And, come on, when you are stopped for speeding, if you tell the cop that others were speeding too, does that matter?

You know when I first heard the GOP use this defense? Nixon. Everybody does it, Nixon just got caught.

Everyone is doing well, everyone's pretty tired, and Mom and baby come home tomorrow (and tomorrow is also her birthday - quite a present, I would say). Big brother - almost 3 - will be happy to have mommy and daddy home again; it's hard to explain the whole hospital thing to a 3 yr old.

What a weekend! Our hearts our full and we are very grateful for this new little blessing.

You sound like you're going to have your own hands full with an exhausted daughter, son-in-law and two little guys. They're lucky to have you living nearby.

Our elder daughter is six months pregnant with her second child, who's due sometime around the first week of January. And like the first one, while she and her OB/GYN already know the baby's sex, the rest of us don't. She just tells us, "It's a surprise." As long as he or she is healthy, I don't care.

near Redwood Valley just below Willets and east of Highway 101 required my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew (plus a toddler and a 5-year-old) to evacuate their in-the-woods homes at 4:30 this morning, along with one of our daughters, a resident of NYC, who happened to be visiting. Fire encompasses over 1000 acres and was 0% contained as of dawn. Their homes, which they built themselves, are threatened. Frightening.

Wasn't sure how much could be said about Mike Pence and his faux dignity, other than that he's certainly free to express his opinions, but the taxpayers would appreciate it if, in his official capacity, he didn't send them the bill for doing so, and had some appreciation that, in his official capacity, he doesn't have the right to decide what is and isn't dignified or appropriate, nor does he get to decide what the flag means to others.

But I have gotten some pleasure out of seeing just how easily Trump taps into Pence's need to assert his own deeply-biased opinions; one has to wonder if there is any patch of skin on Trump's rather large posterior that Pence's lips haven't kissed.

it is scary. Total devastation in some areas of Santa Rosa about 10 miles north of here. We were packed and ready to leave the area yesterday morning. Some areas of Rohnert Park were on mandatory evacuation but later it was downgraded to voluntary evacuation. Our area was told to pack our cars and be ready to evacuate. We never had to leave. I think the fire that threatened us was contained yesterday. Still the fires in Santa Rosa are not contained and ongoing. Many areas of the northern part of Santa Rosa completely destroyed. I have posed some things on Facebook if you can get to my page to look. Air quality is bad. It is very smokey and smells like fire., You know the drill having lived in the LA area for years. I'll keep in touch

millionaire footballers, because of employment contracts and union collective bargaining, are enjoying a right most americans don't have. federal law should protect employee's political speach. an employee should not be fired for having a bumpersticker on their personal car that supports the democratic party candidate for president, should not be pressured to volunteer personal time for political candidates, and should not be forced to engage in patriotic theatre.

entertainers - such as NFL footballers and WWE wrestlers - should have their performance obligations clearly outlined in their employment contracts. for example, footballers on the field respectfully stand while a wrestler may be asked to strut about shaking his fist during the national anthem (if asked to be `Igor from USSR' to enrage the audience).

GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Would it be a good idea or a bad idea for the U.S. to try to shoot down a North Korean test missile? I put that question to analysts who've been tracking North Korea's program for years. And there was no consensus.

JONATHAN POLLACK: I think that there is ample and growing justification to attempt to shoot down.

KARAKO: Is lobbing a missile over Japan into the sea - does that rise to the level of requiring a kinetic response? In the absence of a military threat, it's not something that needs to be done immediately.

MYRE: But Karako doesn't rule it out. He says it could send a message to Kim. But he doesn't see it as a solution to the larger issue of keeping the North Korean program in check.

KARAKO: It's one of the things that might be done once - maybe twice - to send a signal. But I think in principle, our military assets would be used for a military mission.

MYRE: And shooting down a missile is hard. It's often described as hitting a bullet with another bullet. Michael Auslin is at the Hoover Institution and says U.S. anti-missile systems are good and getting better. Still...

MICHAEL AUSLIN: It's a big gamble to decide whether or not to do this.

The difference is, however, our standoff with the Soviet Union worked because the leaderships of the two countries were presumed to be both rational and realistic. Crazy as it may sound, imo, the only rational player in the current crisis is North Korea.

N.K's Leader, Kim Jong-Un, has only one goal, to remain in power. Of course, he knows his nuclear weapons arsenal, small as it is, can only be effective as a deterrent against an attack by the West. He certainly knows that launching any kind of first strike guarantees his, and, his country's annihilation.

What's so difficult for me to understand is, why The U.S. is so hell-bent on taking this, relatively, small crisis, which could, and, should be dealt with through negotiations, and ratchetting it up to the point of putting millions of lives at risk?

interested in war, I think it's Donald Trump, who truly doesn't have a clue what war would mean, but golly gee, why have these nuclear weapons and launch codes if you're not going to use them? He's fairly drooling over the chance to make the worst kind of history, to carve another notch on his belt.

Trump now may be the most dangerous of the world's leaders, giving up, as he seems to have done, on friendlier, negotiated methods of sandbox play, choosing instead to see how many times he can throw sand in someone's face before it gets thrown back in his own.

Now, maybe it wasn't ever going to be possible to keep Kim Jong Un in check indefinitely, but I didn't think it was possible for someone to be as mind-numbingly stupid as Trump is, either.

He's demented. You know that phrase, "he'll be the death of me?" It's starting to hit a little too close to home.

there is the fear that Trump sees a war with Kim as being a simple and quick military intervention. Not only solving that pesky problem, but also, jacking up his polls owing to his terrific leadership...no other president for the past 25 years did what he did.

---North Korea to Trump as Grenada was to Reagan. It could be this kind of thinking that has the generals up at night and Corker warning, back in August, that Trump does not have the knowledge, stability and competence needed.

But he's been briefed on the loss of life that war will kick off. Does he care? He doesn't care about Puerto Rico today. McMaster, Kelly, and Mattis all 3 know there is no such thing as quick Korean military intervention. Our firm allies South Korea and Japan will be upended and plunged into crisis during such events also.

delusions and confusions distilled into an unshakable belief of superiority. Trump is briefed but we know that he believes he knows more than the generals, because he claimed so. And, Tillerson's assessment of Trump as a moron, or f...moron, stemmed from Trump's disparagement of the briefing about Afghanistan. Trump likened the issue to the bad experience of a friend who remodeled the 21 Club in Manhattan...which he saw as the same as Afghanistan, apparently. Of course, the 21 Club owner subsequently indicated that nothing Trump had said about the restaurant was accurate.

We had a shooting in Las Vegas and 50+ people died. Front page news for weeks on end.

Mentally unstable Trump, with our entire Military at his beck & call, is taunting, mocking, and, baiting another nuclear armed nut-job (smaller, but, not insignificant) and, using 10-20 million innocent souls as unwilling hostages, in his sadistic, psychotic game of Russian Roulette. But, it's, yawn,...............ho-hum, just Trump being Trump.

references of Corker seem humorous but betray the danger and seriousness of the Trump presidency as Corker is telling the country...the man is taking us on the path of nuclear war. And, then the Betty Crocker-like IQ bake off challenge of the president to his own Secretary of State take us to another level.

But, the seriousness of the situation was underscored in an interview tonight by Chris Hayes of Gave Sherman, reporter with Vanity Fair.

Mr. Sherman reported that officers such as Mattis and Kelly have talked about what to do if Trump impulsively decides to rain nukes down on an enemy, Iran or North Korea. The discussion is that of what physical force would be used against Trump...tackle him.. or something. Chris Hayes was shocked, as were, probably, most viewers.

My thoughts and prayers are that Kim is more rational and responsible than Trump. Or, at least, Kim realizes that warfare ends his regime, not to mention his life...a primary concern. The rest would be secondary to him.

I said "the U.S." meaning the military-industrial power brokers, not the American people. Unfortunately, tragically, the interests of those in power, and America's citizens, are not the same. And, as to our "mind-numbingly stupid" President, we really don't even know if he really is in charge of our government.(or, is it The Troika?)

Anyway, I still remember, vividly, living through those 13 terrible days of Oct, 1962. And, yet, there was some solace in the knowledge that we had some very smart, very practical, very peace-seeking, and, very knowledgeable people working on that crisis.

Back in 1962 we had the Leadership of both The U.S. and, The Soviet Union working around the clock towards some sort of solution, and, making sure that war couldn't break out accidently due to mistakes, miscalculations, or, misinterpretations.

Yet, here we are today, involved in a crisis where the countries involved are equipped with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons & missiles. And, who do we have leading our side? We have, as they say in the movies, "The Worst Case Scenario." We have a guy who, regarding the issues involved, knows absolutely nothing, but, (delusionally) believes he knows absolutely everything.

Never in my wildest nightmares could I have imagined, only one/two generation later, we'd have an uninformed, disinterested, narcissistic-to the point of being clinically unstable, President like this one. I don't know all the legalities of what it takes to impeach (or, just remove) a sitting President today. But, I would think that taunting, threatening, challenging, and, publicly, mocking an, already distressed & threatened, nuclear equipped dictator should be high on the list.

Kim, who recently promoted his younger sister in a significant consolidation of power, could also use the Chinese Party Congress to put on a show of defiance for the international community.

Hailed as the mainland's 'Game of Thrones,' the all-important Congress will decide the leadership of China's Communist Party for the next five years and is the country's biggest political event.

The relationship between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kim is "pretty bad," Farkas said. "They have a lack of respect for one another -- that's been exacerbated lately by the fact that the Chinese have jumped in with us [the United States] under the umbrella of U.N. sanctions."